2004 Elections and After

The results of the general elections for the Lok Sabha, the
lower house of the Indian Parliament, held in four phases during April-May 2004,
surprised many political pundits, especially those whose views on what the
masses think are conditioned by the views expressed in the mainstream media. Not
surprisingly, a deluge of political analysis followed in the media largely to
cover up for the deficiencies of earlier analysis. Let us call the sum total of
this new body of analysis ‘standard interpretations.’

Standard Interpretations

The first interpretation, pronounced by much of the media in volte-face,
and officially and repeatedly proclaimed by the obedient new prime minister Dr.
Manmohan Singh, is that the verdict is for Sonia Gandhi. The claim is so
farcical that its empirical basis need not even be reviewed in detail. Although
the Congress did improve its own tally by about 40 seats to end up with about
28% of the total seats, its vote tally remained virtually the same. We will
presently see where these additional seats came from. This is not to deny that
Gandhi did an admirable job with the campaign against much odds. It is to her
credit also that she had personally denied that the verdict is either for her or
for the Congress. Sycophancy in the Congress culture infects even its most
distinguished members.

The second interpretation, pronounced most prominently by the
(establishment) left, including left-wing commentators such as Praful Bidwai,
that the verdict is for ‘secularism and democracy’ is so ambiguous, perhaps
by design, that it is hard to attach any meaning to it. If secularism is to be
indicated by the vote-share of the BJP, then the verdict is not secular since
its vote share remains virtually the same as in 1999. No doubt, the party has
lost about 50 seats, but that is largely because of astute alliances formed by
the Congress to increase the non-BJP tally. In fact, wherever there was a
straight fight between BJP and Congress – in the big states of Rajasthan,
Madhya Pradesh, and Gujarat – Congress has lost heavily. There has been some
refreshing turn-around in Gujarat (nothing definitive), but that is because the
phenomenon of huddling under power of state-terrorism unleashed during the
carnage has lost its edge. The biggest losers indeed are the non-communal
parties that aligned with the communal BJP to form the NDA. Even there, there is
no evidence that the non-communal parties such JD (U), TDP, AIADMK etc. were
punished because of their association with the communal BJP.

The only real effect of a secular vote, especially in UP and
Bihar, that might have resulted in NDA’s defeat in about 30 seats was the
consolidation of the Muslim vote against it. The community just voted for
whoever was in a position to defeat the BJP; little of this translated into an
actual increase for the Congress. So, the major gainers are the non-Congress
anti-BJP groups including the left, while the major losers are the pro-BJP ones.
Therefore, there is no direct national-level interpretation. That interpretation
can only be reached by the cumulative effect of how different sections of people
voted in their own regions.

When we go region by region, it is clear that people, as
usual, voted from their class interests although every effort was made by each
contesting party to divert attention to ‘national’ issues such as
communalism, democracy, etc. The BJP in fact tried to impose the view of the
elites on the entire nation with the ‘India Shining’ campaign. No doubt,
these issues are more serious than gun-laws, drugs and ‘religiosity’
routinely propagated as the only issues in US elections, but they are not quite
the livelihood issues for the vast impoverished masses.

Class war

This is not to deny that people did take matters in their own
hands. Several otherwise disjointed (or even conflicting) features seem to
support this thesis. First, the BJP did win quite handsomely in some states
where the incumbent Congress or other non-BJP governments indulged in massive
neo-liberal policies. As the analysis of the psephologist Yogendra Yadav shows,
even where BJP and its allies, while in government, lost the elections, the
upper classes basically voted for them. Where the votes of the lower class
majority got fragmented, the NDA scraped through; where the votes consolidated,
it lost. Second, even where Congress or its allies lost while in government, the
upper classes voted for them or for the BJP; the poor in those cases voted for
third parties.

The sole exception to this pattern is West Bengal where the
incumbent left government was voted back to power. But the contemporary history
of West Bengal is too different – and outside the scope of this essay – from
other regions to fall under a general pattern anyway. For example, it will be
facile to conclude that the left government enjoys an overwhelming support of
its people. It is well known that the Congress vote (INC plus Trinamul) has
remained more or less static at over 40% throughout the 27 years of left rule,
while the left vote has hovered at around 45%. However, this consolidation of
votes between the left and the Congress does support the class factor raised
below.

Returning to the general pattern, it will also be facile to
conclude, following the third standard interpretation, that the vote was
essentially decided by the so-called anti-incumbency factor. As we saw, in most
cases, even when the incumbent governments have been thrown out, the upper
classes have voted for them; so, there was no discernible anti-incumbency with
respect to the upper classes. It turns out, however, that the poor are in a vast
majority. So, the class rejection by the poor gives an over-all picture as if
the people, as a whole, have rejected a given government, when in fact it is
largely the poor who have acted ‘anti-incumbently’.

In region after region, people have thrown out governments
(including Congress governments as in Karnataka and in Madhya Pradesh and
elsewhere in the recent past), whose policies led to massive impoverishment and
loss of democratic rights. What are these policies? In each case, people’s
anger was targeted at the consequences of the neo-liberal economic policies
initiated by the Rajiv Gandhi-Narasimha Rao governments, continued by Deve
Gowda-Gujral governments, and taken to the limit by NDA. The nexus between the
NDA and the Sangh Parivar and US imperialism, pro-Israeli lobbies, mainstream
media, Indian big business, and MNCs, especially financial corporations, has led
to a class war between the elites and their hangers-on (top 20%) and the rest of
the people. Election 2004 is very much a non-violent expression of this class
war.

Not surprisingly, the real picture is beginning to dawn on
the mainstream media and the political pundits represented there. What we have
termed ‘standard interpretations’ have slowly given way to expressions such
as ‘India must shine for everyone, not just the rich’, ‘the poor are angry
because they have been left out’, and the like. The built-in assumption in
these remarks is that the poor agree that the current economic policies are fine
in themselves, except that their reach needs to be enlarged. In other words, the
poor have no problems with the rich staying rich or even getting richer, as long
as the poor get a share. The lesson is that, although the poor are ‘angry’,
the solution is to pursue neo-liberal policies with more vigour, albeit with a
‘human face’.

So the picture is clear. If basic policies remain untouched,
then the class war continues in its present diffused form. As long as the class
war is expressed in the absence of democratic movements, the communal-fascist
forces always have a big chance to come back although they are the latest and
the biggest perpetrators of these policies.

NCMP and the Budget

Class war then is the context in which the meaning of the
National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP), announced by the United Progressive
Alliance (UPA), and the Union Budget presented in July as a starting
implementation of this programme, is to be understood. Commentator after
commentator, including those from the left, have hailed the NCMP as something of
a watershed in pro-people pronouncements. There is no space here for a detailed
analysis of the NCMP. Suffice is to note the following: it does not give up
privatisation of public sector undertakings, does not restrain direct foreign
investment, does not tax the rich or withdraw the subsidies enjoyed by the rich,
does not comment on the imperialist aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq. There is
to be no review of the sale of BALCO. The NCMP advocates closer ties with all
states including the US, universally denounced as the biggest rogue state in
history. NCMP has much rhetoric about helping the rural sector, advancing
literacy and education, increasing employment, curbing the saffronisation of
society etc.

However, except for some half-hearted attempts on the last
item by the Human Resources Department ministry, most of its promises remain
rhetoric as the features of the budget show. As economists have pointed out, the
allocation for the rural sector is in fact less than that announced in
the interim budget by the BJP finance minister Jaswant Singh. Although NCMP
promised at least 6% allocation for the education sector, the budget imposes an
education cess to the tune of 2% of all taxes to raise a fraction of the money
promised. There is no significant increase in investment for health and
unemployment. The work-for-food programme guaranteeing 100 days of work to each
household is restricted to just a handful of districts and is mostly a
continuance of earlier programmes anyway.

On the other hand, the budget aims to open crucial sectors
such as insurance and aviation to direct foreign investment. The military budget
shows a ‘one time’ acceleration of over 11000 crores of rupees; under some
estimates that include salary expenditure, the ‘growth’ is even higher. The
budget makes no progressive tax proposals while reducing the rate of interest
for the Employees Provident Fund. The list goes on. The glaring discrepancy
between even the modest goals of NCMP and its virtual abandonment within two
months helps only to bring out the known untenability of the concept of ‘liberalisation
with a human face’.

On other areas, it is surely coincidental that the new
Foreign Minister Natwar Singh could make a trip – his first abroad – to the
US ostensibly to attend the funeral of one of the greatest criminals in recent
history, Ronald Reagan. It could not be coincidental that he used the
opportunity to give a joint press conference with Colin Powell in which he
declared that the issue of sending Indian troops to Iraq requires ‘rethinking’.
Immediate public outcry compelled him to modify his remark. Nonetheless, within
two months of the assumption of office by the Manmohan Singh government, Richard
Armitage, the US Deputy Defence Secretary, paid a red-carpet visit to India.
According to reports, all protocol was set aside so that this mass-murderer
could meet the prime minister, the defence minister, and others within a day. It
was further reported (and vaguely denied by the government) that one of the
items of discussion concerned the training of the renegade US-controlled Iraqi
police in India.

The NCMP promised the repeal of the Prevention of Terrorism
Act (POTA). The draconian act has not only not been placed before the parliament
in the first available session, atrocious violation of human rights continues
under this Act. There are reports that POTA will be replaced, not
repealed, in the next session of the parliament; the replaced act is said to be
essentially POTA without the name. The government’s refusal to withdraw the
Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which is even more draconian than POTA, gives
some indication of the line of thinking of the UPA government on matters
concerning civil and human rights.

Despite these violations of the will of the people as
expressed in the Elections 2004, almost the entire ‘secular-democratic’
attention, except for the rhetoric, is now geared to getting into councils,
government committees, advisory bodies, media, and the like, with the agenda of
‘rectifying the mistakes of the past’ and to create and implement ‘pro-poor’
policies of governance. We surveyed a sample of these ‘pro-people’ policies
and their implications for the future. As Arundhati Roy pointed out soon after
the results, the poor of course have been left behind already.